Latest / Spokes & Strategy: Marketing the Bicycle / EP 16: What Really Makes a Cycling Product Premium with Seth Carlson
Transcript
- Brandon Morphew: is there a product you've purchased, like a cycling product and thought there's absolutely no reason this should cost this much? Seth Carlson: Yeah. Definitely there is no reason a ceramic speed bottom bracket should be as expensive as it is. That's just what it is. Brandon Morphew: Welcome to Spokes and Strategy, Marketing the Bicycle with Brandon Morphew and Chris Melman of Miso Partners. Welcome to Spokes and Strategy, where the business of bikes meets the joy of riding. Today we're going to talk about what actually makes a cycling product premium. Is it the material, the engineering, where and how it's made, the performance, the logo? Or at some point, is premium Seth Carlson: Or at some point. Brandon Morphew: simply whatever customers decide they believe premium is. Our guest today spends a lot of time in the middle of that question. Seth Carlson is an engineer, an entrepreneur, product developer, and the founder of Rotation Engineering. He spent more than a decade working in manufacturing and aftermarket products, taking ideas from the drawing board all the way through production and into the market. Seth Told us before this conversation that one of the biggest is biggest challenges he's willing to talk about is customer perception of quality. So we're going to go there. We're talking about what actually goes into making a better cycling product, what customers are really paying for, why some upgrades matter and others maybe don't, and what Seth has learned about business from engineering, manufacturing, racing, and spending a long time trying to make things people actually want to buy. I'm your host, Brandon Morphew. And today we're getting into one of those subjects that can get interesting pretty quickly in cycling. What actually makes something worth paying for, paying more for? Before we get anywhere near engineering, Seth, or business, what are you writing right now? Seth Carlson: I've got let's see cross country bike, I've got a Santa Cruz Blur. That's kind of the primary bike I ride. I've got a Trek Madone Road bike. and then I've got a couple I've got a Factor Eludo gravel bike and then a Trek Boone cycle cross bike. Brandon Morphew: It's a good stable. when when did you get get hooked on bikes? What wha w what was it that got you got you started? Seth Carlson: let's see. I was probably I think I was probably like fourteen. my dad bought something on eBay. It was an air compressor and we needed to to go pick it up and it actually ended up being in Burke, Vermont. So we took a family trip up to Burke to pick up this air compressor and we just stayed at like a campground overnight, not even realizing that Kingdom Trails was literally right there. so I saw all these people riding bikes. I was like, that's interesting. So me and my brother rented bikes for the day. I'd never even ridden a mountain bike before. And we just We rode for the day and I saw all the people, you know, with their race bikes and I was intrigued by it. And when we got home I told my parents I was really interested in a bike. My birthday was coming up, so they bought me a relatively inexpensive Motovican hardtail and I was riding that around and I rode to a local skate park close by and I saw a guy there riding a really nice downhill bike at the skate park and I asked him if I could ride it and he said, yeah sure. He he was probably like roughly my age. So I'm taking it around and I jump it and I go to jump between two quarter pipes and I smash the wheel on the second quarter pipe and pop pop the tire. And he comes over and I told him, I'll I'll fix it, I'll fix it. So he comes back to my parents' house and we fix the tire and we spent all weekend just building dirt jumps at my parents' house. Later on come to find out he worked at the local bike shop and he's my longtime best friend now, still still to this day. But he was really big into cross country racing. so that's kinda what got me into it, is like we started going to the races together and I just liked it since then, so Yeah. That's Brandon Morphew: That's fantastic what a great story. Seth Carlson: what a great story. Brandon Morphew: c is there can an engineer specifically ever be just riding a bike or are you constantly thinking about the things that can be improved? Seth Carlson: So I used to constantly think about the things that could be improved pr prior to having the the bike business. Now having the bike business and being in the industry, I'm more more thinking about, you know, the improvements that really make sense for the for the ride. Like anything can ultimately be improved over and over and over again, but like what what's really gonna make the difference? and it's not it's not just like the improvements in the parts or the performance. It's you know, there's diminishing returns on how much money somebody's willing to spend versus you know what what you're really gonna gain from it. So it's really it's really putting I think a lot more now about the I used to think more about the ultimate performance. I've kind of transitioned my thinking into like what what moves the needle at a reasonable price point. Brandon Morphew: Well, my guest today is Seth Seth Carlson, entrepreneur, engineer, product developer with more than a decade experience in manufacturing and aftermarket pr products. president of Seals It and Alan Tool and the founder of Rotation Engineering. and the idea is pretty straightforward, make meaningful improvements where they matter, just like Seth mentioned, and deliver a premium cycling product without adding unnecessary fluff. I love that. Seth's career has been spent doing something that's easy to describe and really d difficult to execute. Taking an idea, engineering it into a real product, figuring out how to manufacture it, and then convincing somebody it's worth buying. It's a great thing to see. And and before we jump in, I I want to be transparent about one part of our relationship. Seth and rotation engineering are also clients of Mieso Partners. we work together and that relationship is is part of how we know Seth. And so we just want to make sure that that was up front before diving into the conversation any further. and that that said, Seth had mentioned no questions are off limits, including the uncomfortable ones. So we will be taking you up on that. So welcome, welcome to Spokesman Strategy. Seth Carlson: Yeah. Brandon Morphew: when it when when you y you're an inj engineer, when you became a entrepreneur and and you're you're kind of shifting your roles, what what happens to the the know how around the engineering things? Do you do you have to turn it off? Is it compartmentalized? Seth Carlson: I guess like right right from the beginning, even working with seals it I was always so deeply involved with the business and marketing side that like I think I've always had a pretty good balance of like you know the engineering principles, but then also being able to make sure it makes sense from a business perspective. I think like I've seen a lot of companies, they have great products, they're designed very well, they're manufactured well, but they're not, you know, being made in a way that makes sense for, you know, the business to work. So it's I you know, having that balance and and being introduced to the business side of things early on definitely definitely helped. Brandon Morphew: Where do you think those inst instincts come? Seth Carlson: So I grew up my parents my parents like I I grew up around small business. My parents had businesses. I grew up on a farm. so it's like, you know, watching how the day to day of a small business works, you know, my whole life definitely definitely was kind of like ingrained in my personality. but then when I started working at Seals It, Stanley, who was the owner of Seals It, really made an extra effort to kind of bring me everywhere. So like we when I first started working here, I was just working here one day a week, just doing some odds and ends things. and but he would as as time went on, like he would bring me to the anodizing places, he'd bring me to the welding places, he'd bring me to visit customers, even if there was no like real purpose behind it, just to, you know, get me out and seeing how all these things I mean, we would go to foundries, we would go to all sorts of places. even even if there wasn't an immediate need for it, just to see so I could see what all the processes looked like. And we would just talk about, you know, the numbers and business and he he did a really good job at, you know, exposing me to all that stuff, even though like it wasn't even an immediate need at that point. Brandon Morphew: Is there like a first product that you remember looking at and thinking I could make this better? Seth Carlson: The bottom bracket for sure I knew I could make better just from the experience in the motorsports stuff. simply by just having better tolerances around the you know, how the bearing is being installed and you know, the bearing bores and all of those those types of things were really where the the bike ones were falling short. so that that was kind of the first one I saw that we could definitely make better. Brandon Morphew: Why why create your own brand rather than simply, you know, finding a partner who already has a a a company and and pitching them on, you know, making a better bottom bracket, for instance? Seth Carlson: Honestly, it's it's I've always just like doing my own thing. Like I don't I don't want to be limited by having a partner or really working with somebody else or you know, we I wanna do things the way I think it should be done and then anytime you bring another person into the equation, it always you know, you end up having to make two parties happy and sometimes that's difficult. Brandon Morphew: When you're thinking about the customer and what they care about, how do you decide that this is something that's actually gonna, you know, be demonstratably better and is actually gonna be something the customer wants? Seth Carlson: So I definitely learned a lot through the the product development on the rotation side. So like in our seals at business, we kinda have a one of a kind product. So like if there's a customer need, they automatically purchase our product because we're we're a one of a kind We don't really have a lot of competition. We're one of the only people making this specific product. We're in the bike industry, you know, creating the products we have now, there's a lot of competition. so originally I thought, well, if we make the products better, then what else is being offered, you know, people will buy it. But I I quickly realized that You could go to e p pretty much any cycling manufacturer's website and they're all gonna claim to be the best and they're all gonna have their own testing and they're all gonna have and I know we had this conversation early on, you know, in our our discussions, like when we were talking about marketing plan, was I didn't wanna put out all of these claims saying we're the best and just and just h have what every other brand has and just have our name at the top of a chart of some testing that was done. so I wanted to think of other ways that you know we could we could get the message across that we had good products. And have kind of circled all the way back to like what we talked about before, having a premium product. I I believe the customer wants a premium product. You know, there there is there is I guess there is a customer for everything, but I think the average person wants a premium product for a good price. And there are some people who like the the extra, you know, fluff of some of the things and they're willing to spend the extra money and that's there's nothing wrong with that either. But I think about like what our customers seem to like is like, you know, you take our wheels for example, okay, we're getting we're getting a wheel set for two thousand dollars that's the same weight and has the same specs as a lot of companies charging three thousand dollars for a wheel set. And there's no there's really no substantial difference besides the price. So it's like originally I thought people just wanted the absolute best, but then I realized that that wasn't really the the main base of customers. The main base of customer wants something very nice, but also, you know, they're they're not opposed to paying a little bit of a premium, but maybe not the maybe not the highest end. Brandon Morphew: Thinking about the customers and sort of their perception of quality and premium, wha what are the signals that they're using in your opinion to judge quality? Seth Carlson: I think a lot of it is like what they see on social media that the pros are using. so like I think if if somebody Yeah. Brandon Morphew: So if I put a if I Seth Carlson: Yeah, if I put a wheel set on like if I put a wheel on that Todd A has, then I'm gonna be, you know, ten percent faster than I am now. Brandon Morphew: So you think it's predominantly driven by like trust in an athlete, a professional, and and less to do with, let's say, the price, the brand name, weight, the finishes. It's it's really, you know, where it was made, it's really got to do with the sort of who's proven it, the sort of borrowing the trust from the athlete. Seth Carlson: No collar. Yeah, definitely sorry about that. It definitely seems that way. I mean obviously there's outliers all all the time, so it's like there's people that do their due diligence on every last detail before they make a purchase, but that doesn't seem to be the the average. and then like the other thing I'm I'm noticing is like I think people People like to go with products from a brand that they either like like the people or they like the message or you know, they like the feel of the brand. That makes a big difference. I mean, there's if you look at most bike products these days, I mean most stuff being released is is pretty good. from from most bike like if you go back ten years ago, I don't think that's the case. But what's on the market today, I mean, everything's pretty good. From components to complete bikes. I mean, there's there's not a lot of like major failures out there. So I think the the the message of the brand and the price point seems to kinda be the differentiating factor, but And the and the support. I think the customer support makes a big difference too. Brandon Morphew: really interesting. So we're seeing this big push around like that XDS X Lab for instance, their their bikes are, you know, they seem like they're really good. Their perception's really good. They have a pro team that's racing and but they're significantly less expensive even than than a Canyon, you know, which Canyon had had sort of played this role as a what what do you And I know I actually just heard recently that sort of China comes out with their five year plan. And their five year plan is very much tar not just bike, but across all categories, is to target leading US manufacturers and and and unsurp those those manufacturers with their own Chinese Seth Carlson: Yeah. Brandon Morphew: product that's sort of, you know, a a better price point and, you know, equal quality or better quality, I think is their positioning. So I I do think there's something really interesting here around, you know, premium and How do you how do you as a manufacturer think about that and differentiating your brand and your business from that that tidal wave that I think is is coming for if it's not already here in your space? Seth Carlson: So what I will say is like I've seen this with direct to consumer brands over and over and over again in the cycling industry is that they start out at a very cheap price point, you go three or four years down the road, it's no longer as good of a deal as it always was. That's just the nature of it. but I also, you know, I deal with Asian manufacturing on a pretty regular basis and the communication there is a gap there. So it's like I don't think that they're gonna be able to provide the same customer service as an American based company. that's probably gonna be the biggest the biggest gap. So it's like if you have our one of our sets of wheels and you have an issue or you have a question and you call, you're gonna get somebody and you're gonna get an answer right away. And we're local, we understand, you know, the nuances of wherever you're at and what you're trying to do. So we can make a call based upon like a personal experience versus if you're dealing with somebody in China then you you might not get that same customer service experience. I'm like a lot of these products coming out of China are very good. obviously there is some shortcuts that get made to get to a certain price point. What I th what my prediction is what I think we're gonna find is there is going to be a lot of direct to consumer Chinese brands coming out, the products are gonna be good. I don't think the price point's gonna stay like it is forever. The amount of money it takes to market some of these products and get them to market, I think's being underestimated by some of those c companies. once they're deep in it, I think the prices are gonna go up because the Yeah, yeah. Brandon Morphew: I I think I I would agree with you. I think that that that is a probably part of the strategy is as well as sort of like get into the market, sort of build b build a foothold and then and then raise prices over time. That that seems pretty solid. th think about so put yourself in the in the shoes of a shop employee. So they have they have a customer in front of them and they're sort of like why why am I buying this rotation engineering wheel at two thousand dollars when I can buy this? I will just say Chinese brand, you know, the mail or like what's w what should they know about quality maybe that that would be helpful for them in that situation where they're trying to understand, you know, why a wheel is two thousand dollars. Or maybe that's not a good example because you know, you're you're at this, you know, pretty competitive price price point for a quality. Seth Carlson: so every one of our wheels is handled by somebody who rides a bike. So it's like the wheels come in, they get built here, everything gets checked by somebody who is in the cycling world. So they know what they're looking at, they know what the customer is looking at, they're assuring that everything looks right. if something's coming direct from China and th I could be wrong about this, but in most cases from what I've seen at these factories, you know, it's not they they're manufacturing products, they're not doing it because they love cycling a lot of the time. So like in the US a lot of bike companies most of the employees are cyclists. You're you're not gonna get that with a with a shop in Asia. Like I said, I've I've dealt with a lot of these companies before. They're putting out great products, but I think the attention to detail every step of the way isn't gonna be the same as something that's being, you know, assembled here. and then again it goes back to like, okay, so I'm gonna spend fifteen hundred dollars on a direct from China wheel or I'm gonna spend two thousand on a rotation wheel. The rotation wheel's got a three-year no questions asked. crash or, you know, warranty and same with the China wheel. But if if I have a problem next week on Wednesday and I break or crack a rim, chances are rotation engineering is gonna be able to get me a wheel before the weekend so I can go race versus me trying to deal with a company that's got a twelve hour time difference and then hoping that they get back to me in time, you know, that for the for the small increase in costs, I think it's worthwhile to have the peace of mind that you can you can talk to somebody right away. Brandon Morphew: You think I think that's well said, do you think that manufacturers are yourself included, are giving shops enough information to tell that story well? and then what d what what do you think if if not, then what do you think is needed to get that to empower that, you know, sh again, that employee that's on the on the floor? Seth Carlson: I think the answer is probably we're probably not doing a good enough job at relaying that message to the shops to have a you know to have the right message for the customer. And I think it's just like anything else. I mean it all depends if the shops are willing to go the extra mile to portray that message or not. but you know, maybe it's something as as simple as even doing a a small training course or something with with shop salespeople, just even even showing some of the differences, so they can have it in the back of their mind for, you know, if they get asked that question. Brandon Morphew: Okay, switching gears a little bit. thinking about product and the and sort of like between the pro like I have an idea and and you know, all the way through to to somebody can buy this thing. take us through like what actually happens. And and and if and if you don't mind, I'd love to hear specifically about the wax because I think the wax is really interesting to me. Like there's it's a it's an emerging category. I think I think you've got a great differentiated product there, but in general, like what What happens when you're like, I think I could do this better all the way through to somebody can buy this. Seth Carlson: Yeah, so I'll kinda I guess I'll tell the story of the the wax and how we how we did that. So we had already been making our own wax for personal use for six or seven years before we even started rotation engineering. So we already had like a base of kind of what we knew of what worked. but there's a big difference between making a pound of it at home versus two thousand pounds you know a as what they literally make you buy as a minimum for a for a initial batch. so you know, we we had an idea of what we wanted to use and it's it's very similar to what you know, Silka or any of these other companies are using. they everybody's using some sort of dry lube additive inside of either paraffin or microcrystalline wax. So we had make made the decision we wanted to use a paraffin-based wax because that's what we had been using for our personal stuff and it was working well. so we got a chemist involved and we said, okay, what is the maximum amount of additive we can put into the wax? without affecting, you know, the adherence. So he went through all the all the wax we wanted to use and then he went through the different additives and he gave us some formulations of like percentages. We already knew what additives we wanted to use, but he gave us some percentages to use to try to get the maximum benefit from the this dry lube. So We bought dry lube from a US based manufacturer, we bought wax from a US based manufacturer, we brought everything in and we bought a big pot and we made our own wax and I mean we we tried all the different formulas up and down. We tested it for longevity, we tested it for you know for friction all just kinda on our own personal bikes and we we kept doing that and once we came up with a good formula, we started making wax in pucks just out of the shop here. And we really hadn't sold any, but we got the competitive edge racing team on on the wax that we were just making here. They used it, they gave us a lot of feedback, and we we came up with a formula that that we liked. So that took almost a year just just to do that. So once we had the formula we liked, we kind of ran through everything we had done and we found a place that would do the blending for us. It was the place we had already purchased the wax from, so we knew we liked the paraffin. But we started doing the math on what it was gonna cost to blend it. And we were we just could not do it the way we are doing it. It was way too expensive. Like a pound of wax would have been a hundred bucks. So we we imported the dry lube. So like right off the bat, knowing your margins and like what you need as a business to be able to stay in business is is pretty important. Like when you're taking a product from nothing and trying to turn it into something. Like we already had a target price because the price of everybody's wax in the market right now is essentially the same. So we we knew we wanted that to be the target range. so by importing the additives we we were able to decrease the price quite a bit. When we imported the additives though, we imported it from three different places and we actually had to have the additives tested to assure they were what they said they were. Two of the places did not pass the testing. One of the places did. So, you know, thankfully we had the know how to be able to do the testing. so we imported the additives. Of course that was during when the tariffs were like a hundred ten percent, so we got whacked pretty good on the on the the additives that that that time around, but I think that's hopefully going to be resolved. but we we move forward with it. We had it all blended and you know now we have a stable supply chain. So we have a place in the US doing the blending. They provide the wax we import the additives So we got all that up and running and then now you got thousands of pounds of wax sitting in the shop and you gotta figure out how to sell it. So then that's the that's the next the next challenge, but Brandon Morphew: So when you're is you you made a good point about sort of like the price pricing and you know, when you're trying to get that competitive price point, where are you willing? Sounds like the importing versus domestic production is a is an area that you can compromise or, you know, shift around, but w where where are you willing to make adjustments in in like a product and and where are you absolutely unwilling to make a compromise? Seth Carlson: So like going back to the additives, like that would be one place I was not willing to make a compromise. Like we wanted nano particle additives. We had imported some. They said they're they were a certain size. Like I said, we checked them. They were not. Could we have moved forward with it? Yes. Are we going to? No. so like that's a place like materials and things like that are something that I will not make any concessions for. but like you like we had discussed like getting something manufactured in a cheaper way or you know as long as the quality is still there and you have a good test procedure for the quality, then you know, that that only ends up saving money for the for the customer. So Brandon Morphew: Much of is sort of like this work and the quality of the product is actually invisible versus visible to the customer. Seth Carlson: almost all of it's gonna be invisible like right away. Like in the wax perspective, like that's something that would be invisible all of the way probably unless you were actually testing it, yeah. But Brandon Morphew: And Seth Carlson: like I think that's like that's part of like our brand is I just I really want the products to be as good as they can be. So that's that's really what it comes down to. Brandon Morphew: Yeah, so so does that mean that the hardest part of the job is explaining, you know, why someone should, you know, care about these things they can't see? They're not that Seth Carlson: Yeah, that it is very hard. That is very hard. Especially like with what we talked about earlier is like, you know, a lot of it is just the perception of what the pros are riding. And I you know, I'm very happy to have you know, supported the teams we've supported along the way. We've we've had some good results, but like that's the other hard part about marketing a chain wax or a bottom bracket is like those are parts on the bike you don't even see. Though th but they're they are important so th they're hard to it those are hard parts. Mm-hmm. Brandon Morphew: With you know, without getting into anything you don't wanna share, you know, what has the growth looked like for rotation? Seth Carlson: so we're not even through three years yet. but like so our first two years were kinda about the same. you know, kinda to be expected for for a new company. The the third year here, I mean we're about triple of where we were. You know, one nice thing about the rotation situation is that's it it's part of a group of companies. So you know, we can afford to reinvest all of our o everything that's being made through the company back into the company to, you know, get more inventory and develop new products and because we're not it's not a standalone business. So like when it's a standalone business, obviously you're you gotta make payroll, you gotta pay your bills, you gotta do all those things. You know, we're we're kind of in a unique situation being part of a bigger group of manufacturing companies that, you know, we can have a longer term projection and, you know, kind of accelerate the growth by being able to just re- reinvest you know, reinvest all that income. So Brandon Morphew: You think that positioning, so sort of like the size that rotation is, the scale of like the total operations, do you think that gives you some competitive advantages against sort of established players in the market? Some of the folks you're competing against? Seth Carlson: Yeah, I mean I know of brands that have been, you know, in the industry for some of them twenty plus years and we're, you know, from a total revenue standpoint already outpacing a lot of those brands. so I I do think I I think part of it is that we already have a foundation, we already have a building, we already have all of our accounting basics, we already have bookkeepers, like we have all that stuff in place. Somebody starting a standalone business, especially If it's a part-time business, those are going to be stumbling blocks, you know, for a long time until you kind of get up and running. So I th I do think it definitely gives us a head start already having that foundation. and we're able to you know take some more risks and things from a inventory and product development standpoint, just because we already have that base. Brandon Morphew: So I'm I'm in a usual un unusual seat here because, you know, we work together. you know, one thing that we've seen, you know, as an agency is is how difficult it can be to communicate the sort of tech technical differences, the things that make a difference, you know, to the rider. from where you sit, what where do you think that the the story tends to get lost? Where do you think things fall off? Seth Carlson: So like I I definitely made this mistake at the beginning is like since I come from a very technical background, a lot of these things are easier for me to not even understand, but just interpret some of the language. You you need to be able to tell the story in a way that makes sense to somebody who might not have that same technical background. so that's the hard part. So like A lot of the times it's not even I think I think where I was getting hung up was I was trying to portray the portray the story as okay, well these products last longer because of X, Y, and Z additive or tolerance or the average person doesn't care about that. They just care that it lasts longer. And I I really think the only way that that story's gonna get out there is just with time and people just saying, yeah, this this stuff really does work. So we just gotta keep trying to just explain it in in a way that just makes sense for the average rider, yeah. Brandon Morphew: Wh where do you think the balance is between like oversimplification and sort of delivering a you know, tet a technical difference for the for the product? 'Cause clearly Seth Carlson: I Brandon Morphew: you have a technical difference. Seth Carlson: I've kind of taken the position like so I do I have people email me or call me and they're looking for explanations on what makes something better. I've personally taken the position of I give them a very basic explanation and I say, if you want to get deep into the weeds about this, please feel free to ask whatever questions you want and I'm happy to answer them. that way it's like if they're not interested in it, they're not getting overwhelmed. If they are interested in it, you know, they're able to to get a Brandon Morphew: You have a a sort of long long lived passion for racing and and it's you know, it's in the SEALs brand, it's also you know, part of the rotation brand. You you you have been supporting racing programs and you've said you've been surprised by how well they're working. What what what kind of impact do you think the racing supo sponsorship, you know, racing support has impacted? How do you think that's impacted your business? Seth Carlson: Yep, so yeah, I raced I personally raced cars from a really young age. That's kinda like where my start in this whole business came from. I mean I I I I raced every single weekend in a car from when I was five years old all the way up until I was thirty one. so I put in a lot of time there, but We support some race car teams. We also support some cycling racing teams on the race car side. It's since I'm not out there personally doing it anymore, it's getting in with teams that can give you good feedback. like we'll we'll give test products to teams well before they make it to market just to validate everything and get feedback and usually you know we go through a couple iterations before we put something out to market. but but But getting LinkedIn with a team that, you know, has connections in the space and they can tell your story and they're they're happy and willing to tell your story is is definitely the important part. So, you know, we've we've obviously had teams we've worked with in the past on the racing and cycling side that's like they were happy to take your product, but they they didn't really seem like they wanted to tell your story. We've also worked with teams that it's like they were they wanna go out of the way. to make sure that they're telling people about your products. So I think it's like it's a balance of finding a place or a team or a person that's like hungry to to help you and they know that the you know there's gonna be a mutual benefit for for both parties. Brandon Morphew: If you were if you were gonna give like one or two pieces of advice to teams or individuals that are thinking about sponsorship, whether they're race cars or bicycles, is there anything that you would say like when you're talking to manufacturers like yourself that you would want them to be thinking about? Seth Carlson: I think like if if we're looking at it from a rotation engineering standpoint, you know, I wanna work with people that are professional and I also feel like from my own perspective, I I wanna work with people that are up and comers. I've I've noticed that you know, the the younger people that are, you know, up and coming and they wanna like make their mark in racing or whatever they're trying to do, they're gonna be hungrier to to do a better job. and vice versa, like they're gonna go the extra mile to make sure they're giving you the good feedback. They're gonna go the extra mile to make sure they're telling your story, because they greatly appreciate what you're providing for them. Versus like a really highly established team, if you're not one of their primary sponsors, you know, you could be down a long list of you know what's important to them. So if you're so if you're Brandon Morphew: There Seth Carlson: an athl if you're an athlete trying to get a sponsorship, I would say you know clearly defining how you're gonna be able to tell that brand story to other people and how you're gonna be able to get them outreach is is going to be the most important thing. Brandon Morphew: Is there a situation that you can think of where either an athlete impacted product development or maybe results from an athlete contradicted some of the expectations you had with your engineering data? Seth Carlson: so I would say like we'll take the competitive edge cycling race team, for example, the wax, like when we were working with them on the wax, they were you know, especially in Cyclocross they were seeing, you know, some really cold temperatures that we would never have seen in any of our testing. so like that gave us some some good data points. but like again it's Tyler from Competitive Edge, if he has anything, he he always approaches the situation like, hey, I'm noticing this, or like we also sponsor a racing team, Tim Bertrand. He'll always get back to me and say, Hey, we're noticing this with the product. What do you think? He never comes at it like, hey, this isn't working. He'll say, We're noticing X, Y, and Z is happening. What do you think? Do you think something needs to change, or do you think this is just how it is? so like having that. that constructive criticism versus just attacking the person that has the brand I think is is another you know good piece of advice for somebody trying to to get into that position. Brandon Morphew: So zooming out into a sort of more general cycling product, is there a category where you think the marketing has gotten ahead of the actual performance? Seth Carlson: yeah. I would say in you could almost say the whole bike to be honest with you. yeah. I I would say Brandon Morphew: Anything that comes to mind specifically. Seth Carlson: I would say bearings. Bearings. Brandon Morphew: Yeah. Seth Carlson: Bearings and chain wax for sure. like we're releasing that bottom bracket that we were talking about with the steel-coated bearings. I mean, that's gonna be at a hundred fifty dollar retail price point. That's a very strong price point. There's companies with products that are you know, on par or subpar to that hundred fifty dollar product and they're selling for four to five hundred dollars. We're we w with chain wax and bearings, you can look at all the testing data. The best to the worst in almost both of those categories is like one to five watts. It it's w we're getting out of control with one watt I think. but that's that's just my personal opinion. Brandon Morphew: Is there a is there a product you've you've purchased, like a a cycling product and thought there's absolutely no reason this should cost this much? Seth Carlson: Yeah. Definitely like if you look at there's no I'll I'll just come out out and say it there is no reason a ceramic speed bottom bracket should be as expensive as it is. That's just what it is. So I mean Brandon Morphew: very fair. Seth Carlson: I I I'm a firm believer. I I personally in all my bikes I'll run the steel coated bottom bracket. The steel bearings are for a bike. Ceramic bearings are really made for really high speed, high RPM applications. We do sell ceramic bearing. that's Mainly I was against it at first, but it's mainly just because there was a lot of customers asking for it. and we're we're happy to sell it if people want it, but if I was to make a recommendation, I would go for that $150 steel coated berry. Brandon Morphew: Good recommendation. tell us about a situation where there was something you were convinced it was gonna work that absolutely didn't. Seth Carlson: Hmm. Convinced it was gonna work but I know there's stuff. You just gotta give me a second to think about it. At the beginning I came out with some wet oil-based chain lubes. We eventually came up with one that was decent. But I had I had started with some that were like I thought they were gonna be great and they were terrible. Same with the chain wax. There was a couple at the beginning that I was like I was fully convinced it was gonna work and it just there's a reason why the chain wax is being made the way it's made. From like most places all kinda have the same kinda base design. But there's definitely a reason for that. Brandon Morphew: So w that lube, when did you realize it was it was not right? Seth Carlson: after I already had like two thousand bottles of it sitting on the shelf. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that that's pretty much when reality had hit. That it just wasn't it and now it just it just sits there. We just s there is people that there's people that actually use it for like like heavy duty, like beach cruiser type service. 'Cause it it works for that, but from a performance standpoint it's it's not the best. Brandon Morphew: So looking into the future, what part of rotation are you you most excited about figuring out next? Seth Carlson: So I mean I'm really liking the wheels. that's been nice. I mean we we expanded that product offering to a pretty wide range of products pretty quickly. but I I'm really I wanna the next project is really dialing in the hub. so we have a hub right now, it's just a pretty it's a basic design. basic ratchet design, but I I've got some ideas for for a different style ratchet. That that's kind of the next the next thing on the list. Brandon Morphew: I'm looking forward to it. I hope to be a Seth Carlson: Yeah. Brandon Morphew: get a chance to write them. well, Seth, thank you so much for doing this. thank you for giving us, you know, permission to chat ahead of time and go to some places that are a little un uncomfortable, shot across the bow to to one of your competitors. So thanks for that. if if people want to learn more about you, what you're building at rotation, it's rotation engineer rotation dash engineering.com. and we'll include your information and the the website in the show notes. Really thank you to everyone for listening to Spokes and Strategy, where the business of bikes meets the joy of riding. and if you enjoyed this, please you know share it with another bicycle friend or or a shop owner, manufacturer, somebody who who appreciates the bike industry. So thanks so much again and enjoy the rest of your day. Take care. Seth Carlson: Thanks. You too. Thank you.